All the Feels (more of my random thoughts on COVID-19)

This past couple of days have truly hit “all the feels.” Here’s just a sampling of some of the emotions I’ve felt, sometimes all in the same hour, sometimes all in the same 10 minutes.

Relief. Relief that we had the ability to quickly get out of town and get my son from college who’d been displaced from his last semester and have him home. 

Grateful.  Grateful for doctors and nurses who are on the front lines dealing with sick people every day, grateful for the sacrifices businesses (small and large) are making, thankful for the helpers. Grateful for journalists who are working round the clock to keep us informed of what’s really going on. Thankful and appreciative for the amount of work teachers and administrators have put in trying to wrap their heads around how to “do school,” knowing that they won’t be able to please everyone and that changes seem to happen on a dime.

And sadness. So much change. And so quickly!  Sad for the disruption to life as we typically know it..for teachers and administrators trying to figure out the best way to “do school.” For seniors in HS and college. I was thinking about how happy and hopeful we felt on the quad when we dropped our son off at school 3-1/2 years ago, and how sad and lonely the campus seemed when we got him on Saturday. Sadness for the seniors in my school, not knowing whether, or when, any of the senior “things” they’ve looked forward to for years will happen. Sadness that I don’t know when I’ll see my students in person again or carry out traditions that we do near the end of the year in my classes each year. Sadness for families who struggle and will be dramatically effected economically by what’s going on. Sadness for people who are sick and dying of this virus. Sadness for those who are considered among the more vulnerable and are scared for their lives right now.

Angry. Angry for many of the same reasons as above. Angry that our federal government bungled this so much and yet still says their response has been “great and unprecedented.” Angry that people called this a hoax, that they assigned some political agenda to this. Since when is public health a partisan issue, anyway?

Happiness. Happy to read of families having great attitudes about being forced to slow down and enjoy time together. Families sharing resources and ideas online for how to plunge forward in the coming days and weeks. 

And hopeful. I’m hopeful that these measures we’re taking will contain the virus. I heard someone on the radio the other day say they were concerned that the social distancing works so well that people will say this was all hyped when, in fact, the reason cases started dropping was that the measures worked. I’m hopeful that people will continue being kind to each other. Hasn’t it been lovely the way people have been smiling at others, acknowledging them, making offers to tutor each others’ kids online? I’m hopeful that we will continue to offer grace and compassion to others. Most teachers have never delivered content to full classes of students for long stretches of time. It’s uncharted territory. Most schools haven’t closed for extended periods of time. It’s also uncharted territory. Mistakes will be made. Infrastructure may not handle it well. Parents will be frustrated. Teachers will be frustrated and everyone will need to have compassion for each other. I’m hopeful we can have compassion for young people whose big milestone events are up in the air and might be sad about it and have every right to be. Being sad, and even saying so, doesn’t mean they are spoiled or lack resiliency. You can be sad and still grateful for the first responders all at the same time. I’m hopeful we can have compassion for each other as the newness of our situation wears off and reality sets in.

I know I’m not alone with these thoughts and swirl of emotions. I think again, back to Ma and Pa trudging across the prairie in a horse drawn buggy with 3 young girls (or was it four? Albert? Who knows how many they really had, anyway?). Imagine the uncertainty they felt as they embarked on new lives in new places. We’re kind of in the place of a new normal now, but the certainty is that we can stay connected, at least virtually, and that we’ll come out of this stronger than we were before. And hopefully, the kindness and compassion that we expend during this period of time will carry into the future when we’re on the other side of this.

And Then There Were None (At Home, That Is)

Some rambling thoughts upon taking my son to college this weekend...

I’m not new to this game of taking a child to college. I’ve done it one time before, which makes me a veteran college mom. Two years ago, the first time I took one off to college for the first time, I felt like there was so much I needed to tell my older son...stuff that he needed to know right that second. For whatever reason, the most important thing the day before we left to take him was that I hadn’t taught him how to iron, so I made him learn how to iron.  As far as I know, he hasn’t ironed since.  

Two years later, we’re here. Though, this time, it seems I saved all the advice giving for the last day. A day where we were packing, joking, eating obscene amounts of unhealthy food together (looking at you Mini Vermonster), was also the day that I decided it was time to impart all my words of wisdom to him.  And impart, I did.  In conversation, in jokes, in a heartfelt email.  But really, there’s not much I felt the need to tell him (or his brother, for that matter), that hasn’t been said in the past.  Yes, there are laundry tips, housekeeping tips and organization tips, but the lessons they need and should be leaving with should really be the lessons they were getting from us all along, right?  Be kind.  Be true to yourself. Take care of yourself. Work hard. Do your best. Call home. Did I miss anything?  

And now, it’s happened.  This moment that has been looming over us for the better part of the past year, happened today.  I’ve looked at it with excitement, I’ve looked at it with gloom, I’ve looked at it with trepidation and I’ve looked at it with an insane amount of pride that my son knew exactly what he wanted and went for it with the same gusto he’s had for pretty much every other thing he’s wanted to accomplish so far in his 18 years. 

I have read dozens of articles, blog posts, memes and pieces of advice about leaving our kids at college.  I know no less than 120 other moms in the same place we are this weekend...I’ve scrolled through their drop off pictures (and posted our own) on my Facebook feed and realize now that, while my house has a sense of emptiness that it’s never had before, this is the moment we’ve been building toward since, well, since having kids.  They aren’t meant to stay with us forever….I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t even like each other very much if we kept that same mother/child relationship well into their adulthood, because they’re suppose to go off, with baby steps, spread their wings and develop their own lives with the hope that the lessons we’ve passed on stick.  The good ones, at least.  In good ways.

Even President James Garfield had these same sorts of rambling thoughts in 1879 when he wrote of taking his own children off to school, “It will require no little self-sacrifice on my part to see and aid them in the work of separating these precious home ties. I begin to see how it is that parents come to regard children as their own decorations, given for their own selfish comfort. The severe lesson must be learned that they are given to go alone--to leave the parent nest and fly to trees of their own seeking."

I remember both of my kids’ first days of kindergarten as if they were just yesterday.  I cried big as the bus pulled away with my oldest, his brother in my arms crying along with me that he wanted to go too.  I was teary when I dropped off my youngest a few years later, but he was ready. He was ready then and he’s ready now.  I’ve worked at his school either as a volunteer or as a teacher since he was in preschool.  This year will be the first time in his school life that we aren’t just down the hall from each other.  That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?  But he's ready. His look of confidence upon arriving on campus yesterday was reassuring and I know he's going to be fine.

So, yes...tonight, I am a little bit sad.  And yes, I miss him already. And ice cream did help while we were driving home (as it usually does).  But I am not permanently sad.  This is a temporary loss.  A loss of a past, perhaps a loss of the childhood that was.  Knowing that others are dealing with real loss right now probably helps put this transition of sending our youngest off to college into a different kind of perspective.  And what I’m starting to realize is that sending a young  adult to college is really not the end of being a parent, it’s the beginning of being a different kind of parent.  

And tonight, we are no longer "empty nesters in training," we are full on "empty nesters."

Life Goes On

I know I've said it before, but I am really not a great blogger.  I'm not even sure I feel right calling myself one.  I just have a site that I occasionally write on when I feel the need to write.  I read blogs of people who are true bloggers.  I'm not sure if I am able to open myself up in that way, either online or even in a journal, because the truth is, the way I have kept this blog is pretty much exactly the way I have journaled in my lifetime. And the funny thing is that I am a) a decent enough writer and b) reflective enough that I have enough to say. So I'm not sure why I don't write more often.

And what brought me back to my blog this week (for the first time since 2011) is the amount of reflecting I have been doing this monumental week of my older son's high school graduation.  The rational part of me says that the milestone that comes with your graduating child is exactly as life should be.  We were never meant to have our kids with us forever. We had kids in order for them to grow up and go out and follow their live's paths.  But it's really hard to be rational, isn't it?  I long for the days where I was begging my son to go off and play on his own (because I was worried that he was too dependent on me).  If those days were here, I promise I'd play with him and let him boss me around and tell me what to do. If those days were here, I'd read the Truck Book...AGAIN!  and I'd do it without a rolled eye or sigh.  If those days were here, I'd play Uncle Wiggly and not get mad at him for being too competitive.  I would do it all and I'd do it without complaint.

We are full of advice for graduating seniors.  I wrote my son a letter full of important words of wisdom and the words that I hadn't told him but needed him to hear from me and gave it to him on Graduation Day. But where is the advice for the mom of the graduating senior?  How to enjoy the time you have left before they leave.  How to not spend all your time worrying because they aren't home as much since they want to be with their friends and you just want to know they are home and safe in their bed at night.  How to be really excited for this next leg of their lives' journeys and mean it.   How to not argue with them and their sloppy ways or how to just be and prepare for moving onto this next phase of their lives. Or even how to figure out what your (and your husband's) path is when he (and in a few years his brother) are both out of the house and onto their adult lives. These are the things we moms need to know and I'm hopeful that since I know many who are in the same boat with me right now, we will figure them out together.